South China Morning Post:
An alert from his smartwatch prompted 76-year-old Hongkonger Gaston D’Aquino to go to hospital, even though he was feeling fine. It turned out his coronary arteries were almost completely blocked.
And:
“I told the doctor I don’t know why I’m here, but my watch tells me I have an elevated heart rate. He says, ‘Are you feeling anything?’ I said no, I feel fine, I’m feeling all right, nothing’s wrong.”
Hooked up to an electrocardiograph machine – which records the heart’s electrical activity – he learned something was wrong. He was immediately referred to cardiologists.
“I told them about the Apple Watch giving me this reading, and they told me that the watch gives pretty accurate readings,” says D’Aquino. After batteries of tests over the next three days, “they told me that out of the three main coronary arteries, two were completely blocked, and one was 90 per cent blocked.”
Stories like this roll in on a regular basis. To me, this is just a taste of the health benefits that are coming down the pike. Apple’s combination of a massive ecosystem and customer base, along with massive R&D funding give it a distinct advantage in this space.
While people might complain about Siri, they will flock to Apple Watch and the Apple ecosystem if they recognize that the device on their wrist can actually save their life.
This kind of thing will only become more common as they add other indicators to the Watch that can alert people to various conditions. Regardless of market success, if I were on the Watch team this kind of story would validate everything I’d done… people are alive today because of their Apple Watch when they’d otherwise be dead.
Stories like this are exactly what tipped the scales for me on buying the watch.
If it’s that accurate, I’d love for it to be able to send HR data to my Wahoo ELEMNT.